Saturday, October 31, 2015

The current events in Ukraine are caused by the emerging and the consolidation of Ukrainian national state.

It is a progressive process in itself, but it has been implemented in highly undesirable way being accompanied by an outburst of reactionary ideologies (chauvinism of all hues, social racism etc.), a war, fascistization of Kiev regime and intensifying of international tensions.

Two major nations have more or less taken shape in Ukraine.

One, Ukrainian, speaks Ukrainian and votes for the Ukrainian national parties (the parties of the coalitions United Opposition Fatherland (Batkivshchyna) and then “European Ukraine”, as well as ultra-right Freedom (Svoboda) and Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor), etc.).

Anti-communism, especially in the form of anti-Stalinism and “Banderaphilia,” Russophobia and Eurocentrism became as its cardinal ideas.

Another nation speaks Russian and votes for the Russian national parties (the Party of Regions and its successors, as well as the CPU), for secession or doesn’t vote at all.

Its cardinal ideas are Russophilia and Soviet nostalgia with ambiguous nature. This nation prevails in Crimea and eight South-Eastern regions, which became known as the “Novorossiya” (lit. New Russia).

Both nations are affected by nationalism and by the restoration of religiosity to some extent.

There is no need to prove that one or another national minority in bourgeois state is subjected to national oppression.

All past history eloquently testifies that it is a true and exceptions are the peculiarities which require justification.

The minority itself has to judge practically on this issue.

The Russian national minorities of Ukraine put forward the requirements of the linguistic equality; federalization and even secession.

Democratic way of addressing these issues was unbendingly rejected by the new regime in Kiev.

Thereafter the area of Novorossiya (above all – Donetsk and Lugansk regions which have self-determinated) should be considered to be annexed lands (in terms of the Decree On Peace, i.e. forcibly retained) by Ukraine.

Numerous testimonies of people with different beliefs do not allow to doubt the sincerity and the voluntariness of the self-determination of the majority of Crimean population in favor of joining Russia and to depict it as alleged “annexation” or “occupation,” even if it was implemented only due to the Russian military intervention.

As for Russians, they have a double feeling of the return of Crimea: on the one hand, it is a sense of great-power supremacy pushing for the expansion and hegemonic claims; on the other hand, it is the sentiments of reunification of Russian people as the long-awaited triumph of justice.

There is no doubt that Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian minorities would suffer some infringements in the seceded Russian regions (even though justly declared official bilingualism or trilingualism).

However Kiev propaganda, of course, depicts these infringements in an exaggerated manner for its expansionist ends. This problem should be considered carefully, comprehensively and without confidence in the biased sources of both sorts.

We stand in solidarity with the Marxist-Leninist organization Struggle (Borotba), as well as all activists persecuted for communist activity.

By and large, Ukrainian left agenda is now publicly articulated by anti-authoritarianist and pro-Kiev regime Autonomous Workers’ Union (AST), Social Movement Party (Socialny ruh) rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat and the right of nations to self-determination, reformist and nationalistically inclined Left Opposition (based on the CPU and the PSPU) and the above mentioned Borotba. Leading light for communists in other countries is apparent.

The main objectives, which should be pursued in the current Ukrainian conflict:

International recognition of self-determination of Crimean peoples, peoples of DPR and LPR (as well as other partially recognized states – Republic of Abkhazia, Republic of South Ossetia, Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, Republic of Kosovo), and cessation of military aggression of Kiev regime;

Democratic solution of the national question also in the rest of the Novorossiya region (through full legalization of autonomist or secessionist parties, peaceful negotiations and referendums under the supervision of all states concerned);

Termination of Ukrainian policy of legalizing of fascism and criminalization of communism in Ukraine.

In connection with the current Ukrainian conflict the following statements become especially true:

The universal and consistent respect for the right of nations to self-determination,

Protection of the importance and integrity of the historic heritage of the anti-Hitler coalition against fascism,

Democracy and Class Strugglehas been studying Dr Ambedkar and we find the grandson of Dr Ambedkar Anand Teltumbde provides very useful insights into caste and the revolutionary project for annhilation of caste for revolutionary communists.

The video Ambedkar Can Neither Be Adopted Nor Appropriated by The Hindutva Elements is at bottom of this article.

Below is an extract from Anand Teltmunde from an article he has written to Self Obssessed Marxists and Psuedo Ambedkarites

It is not at all important in evaluation of his (Dr Ambedkar) contribution to the Indian society that he did not care for Marxism. He has been singularly instrumental in raising the consciousness of the lowliest of the lowly to their human rights.

He has been the first to foreground the caste question at the national level and give a slogan of Annihilation of Caste.

No one can deny the contribution of the communists and it is verily true that in the mode of class struggle they waged in countryside, castes had melted away. But in terms of sheer magnitude it may have to be admitted that Ambedkar’s influence exceeds all of them.

One may examine the quality of this consciousness but that is a different matter. In India this may be seen as necessary step in the process of democratization. It is with this sense that I said that his contribution to India’s democratization is greater than all communists combined.

It is deliberately rhetorical because I want communists to think what opportunities they have missed and what have been the consequence of that miss.

I have been faulting the early Marxists for importing the moulds from Europe for doing class analysis of India and excluding castes as superstructural category. Lenin had defined classes as follows:

“Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and their mode of acquiring it”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘A Great Beginning: Heroism of the Workers in the Rear: ‘Communist Subbotniks’ in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 29; Moscow; 1965; p. 421).

My contention is that if the early communists had internalized this definition of Lenin, castes could not have been left out to yield an idiotic duality of class and caste.

Even today they keep swearing by the Marxian metaphor of ‘base and superstructure’. Sinha still sees a big problem in my statement that this metaphor has been the biggest hurdle in the path of Indian revolution.

Ask any Dalit Marxist and he would trash this metaphor; ask any non-Dalit Marxist he would cling to this metaphor. Why?

That is the reality of India and its caste divide! Now don’t say that only the non-Dalits grasped the ‘pure’ Marxism. There has been quite a controversy around this metaphor that prompted theoretical developments in the realm of cultural Marxism. But we would not enter that sphere here.

Over the time the Indian Marxists limped to realize that castes are not merely the aspects of superstructure but extend into the production base itself.

Castes in 1920s almost defined peoples’ lives at least in broad terms and hence if they had been incorporated within the class analysis, the anti-caste struggle would have been an integral part of the class struggle eliminating the need of separate anti-caste movement, which was sure to be developed in a divergent direction as it did.

I called this the biggest sin of the communists.

Even to this proposition there was lengthy retort from the organizers’ side. Of course, what was possible in 1920s cannot be tried in 2013. But there should be a realization that a costly mistake was committed. Surprisingly, there is no admission ever from the Marxists.

With all kinds of display of enlightenment on caste question with unmistaken pretention that it was superior to what existed, confront them on this simple issue and you will find them clinging to this metaphor as though it was the core of Marxism.

I have been saying umpteen times that the core character of caste is like an amoeba; it only knows splitting.

Castes under external pressure tend to contract together, but remove the pressure they would start splitting.

All caste movements have experienced it but failed to note this core characteristic of castes.

Babasaheb Ambedkar tried to articulate his anti-caste struggle in class terms, organizing all the Untouchables into a class. He tended to use ‘class’ instead of castes.

His first essay on Caste, when he was just a student in Columbia makes profound observation (I am aware, Sinha and comrades of his ilk will not be amused) about their characteristics.

Needless to say, that his conception of class was not Marxist and rather came closer to Weberian sense.

But as he proceeded, he was compelled by the circumstances to repeatedly fall back to castes. As a result, it sounds unpalatable to many people that his was not the caste based struggle

. ‘Dalit’ that was shaped through this movement deceptively appeared viable, collapsing all the sub-castes into one whole, but today after 60 years it faces a threat of extinction from the upsurge of sub-castes.

The logical conclusion for Dalits to realize is that castes cannot be the basis for articulating any struggle for radical change. What does it mean?

It means that they will have to shun caste idiom and orient them towards class. The circumstances are congenial today than ever before to realize it as every caste has created a class layer within it, which pretends to identify with the rest but is in fact inimical to it.

It is not necessary for Dalits to sublimate to Marxism because they have not yet exhausted Ambedkar itself. Babasaheb Ambedkar gave them a vision of Annihilation of Caste.

That is a good enough dream to pursue.

Any and everything that comes in its way should be discarded as anti-Ambedkar.

Castes cannot be annihilated by Dalits alone for the simple fact that they have not created it.

Unless the larger society owned up this task, castes will not be annihilated. Therefore, they should orient them to identify their friends and foes not on the basis of ‘certificates’ but their placements in life situation, i.e., class.

I have been advising the Left also in a reverse direction that they should shun their orthodoxy and understand that they ought to see castes as the prime hurdle in revolution and reflect it in their practice.

It is not the lip service that they will speak out all wise things but still hamper on the worn out metaphors.

Let their theory as well as practice reflect this conviction that they have really changed. It is through the gradual convergence of these two movements and not the isms that the new revolutionary movement will be born quickly fructifying into Indian revolution.

It is with this logic that I have been warning both sides for years: “there is no dalit emancipation without a revolution and there is no revolution without dalit participation.”

Is there anything anti-Ambedkar here? Or am I speaking the same thing as Sinha did ?

Friday, October 30, 2015

Occupy UGC
Just some edits to put things in perspective :)Video courtesy: Akhil Kumar. Love and gratitude to Tamoghna Haldar for the vision.#OccupyUGC #SaveNonNetFellowship
Posted by Anindya Sengupta on Thursday, 29 October 2015

Video make take time to load

HARSH THAKOR WRITES LONG LIVE THE HEROIC STUDENT RESURGENCE!MAY IT REVERBERATE A FLAME IN WAKING UP THE STUDENT COMMUNITY NATIONWIDE LIKE A TORCH RADIATING.IT SHOULD INSPIRE A COUNTRYWIDE PROTEST AGAINST THE MONOPOLY OF THE RICH IN EDUCATION AND THE STRANGULATION OF GLOBALISATION AND PRIVATISATION ON EDUCATION.OPPOSE THE GROSS INJUSTICE OF THE POLICE ON THE STUDENT COMMUNITY FIGHTING A BATTLE FOR THEIR LEGITIMATE DEMANDS.THE PRO-RICH REPRESSIVE NATURE OF THE GOVT.IS EXPOSED WHICH TRAMPLES ON THE JUST DEMANDS OF STUDENT COMMUNITY.IN COMING DAYS IT WILL SHARPEN ITS TENTACLES AND STRENGTHENING ITS STRANGLEHOLD OVER STUDENT STRUGGLES

Video footage no. 2: Comrade Shehla Rashid, JNUSU vice president, beaten up by male police personnel and dragged on the road. Many female protesters were manhandled, abused and beaten up. Watch for yourselves and please share widely.DCP (Central), Paramaditya said: "...the protesters attacked and injured policewomen.” Let's tear down their lies one by one with evidence, and expose them to the public. This is how women are treated in Modi's rule. Watch the previous video exposing another lie from the police, that there was no lathicharge and the police personnel weren't even carrying lathis: https://www.facebook.com/Akhil1490/videos/963482463713364/#OccupyUGC #SaveNonNETFellowship
Posted by Akhil Kumar on Wednesday, 28 October 2015

After our comrades were released from the thana late at around after 11pm in the night, we marched again towards UGC. The Occupy UGC movement continues with greater resolve, strength and participation.

Our movement is resonating from all over the country- in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Allahabad, Raipur- AISA comrades have organised protests.

Teachers and Teachers Unions are not only extending solidarity, but also participating in our protests. We have got solidarity from our South African friends.

The #feesmustfall in South Africa and #occupyugc movement in India are together claiming rights of students, are defying commercialisation diktats in education.

University strike continues in JNU. Call for simultaneous campus strikes have been given in several universities in the country from 29th Oct.

Students will gather at UGC in larger numbers at 2pm. The teachers and students will meet in a press conference and solidarity meeting.

And we shall ensure that the UGC talks to a joint Student-Teacher delegation by today. If not we shall march forward to occupy MHRD.

We are categorical about our demands-

i. The UGC and the MHRD unequivocally comes out with notification making UGC 7th Oct decision null and void. We will not retreat until they agree to continue the fellowship for all newly enrolled students from next academic year.

ii. The introduction of any exclusionary criteria such as merit or economic criteria has to be withdrawn.

iii. The fellowship must increase from the present scale of Rs 5000/8000 to Rs. 8000/12000 commensurate with increase in JRF.

The fellowship must also be linked to inflation index for all future purposes.

iv. The fellowship must be expanded to all state universities without any exclusionary criteria and with an increased rate. OccupyUGC will not stop until then

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Democracy and Class Struggle publish the above video for information on the War in Turkey against the Kurdish People - we do not approve of political line of video - although it is better than the BBC which ignores the Turkish State war on the people of Kurdistan.

We also publish a report below from Journeyman pictures on the Hidden war against the Kurds.

The HDP opposition cannot carry out it electoralist politics under the combined threat of Turkish State and ISIL terror - In these Turkish operations, more than 3,000 people were arrested and more than 1,000 were imprisoned - the Kurdish people have to the right to rebel against the Turkish State and fight a People's War and defend themselves from attack.

Democracy and Class Struggle agree with the following statement from TKP ML TIKKO comrades in Turkey

In our country, we don’t beg for fascists to take responsibility ! Bullets do the work!’’ say TKP ML - TIKKO

Information Center: Yeni Demokrat Genclik (YDG) made a statement on the TIKKO guerrilla fighters who died in Dersim, retracing the events of recent months in Turkey and Kurdistan. All of these fighters for the people used to belong to YDG, and the youth movement honors those martyrs » Cengiz, Hakan and Özgüç … These comrades, with whom we have campaigned side by side, have long fought to expand the movement Yeni Demokrat Gençlik among young people and become a major force fighting against fascism. These comrades, by martyrdom without surrender and by fighting, honored and praised the struggle of youth ! Their struggle is our struggle ! The People’s Fighters are Immortal ! Your struggle is our struggle !
3 TIKKO guerrilla fighters died in a clash during a operation of the fascist Turkish state in Dersim / Ovacık (Pulur) on the night of 21-22 October. Three fighters of the people, Cengiz İçli (Ünal), Hakan Çakır (Yurdal) Özgüç Yalçın (Sefkan), who devoted their lives to the liberation and independence of the people, have fallen as martyrs during an operation, supported by aviation, who started around 23 o’clock near the village of Şahverdi in Ovacık.

Beginning with the Suruç Massacre, the fascist state of Turkish Republic launched a violent and total offense against the patriotic forces (PKK) and the revolutionary forces under the guise of « struggle against terrorism ».

While the state was exposed during this massacre, employing the barbaric activists of DAESH, it launched the offensive against progressive forces, shamelessly trying to blame the patriots and revolutionaries for it.

In these operations, more than 3,000 people were arrested and more than 1,000 were imprisoned. In parallel, the fascist Turkish state has stepped up military operations and bombings, inside and outside it borders. Bombarding the villages of Zergele to Kandil, the state massacred the people living there.

Likewise, using snipers,a massacres policy began when martial law was declared from Muş to Amed, in the four corners of Turkish Kurdistan.

With the same savagery that Israel demonstrates against the Palestinian people, the vicinity of Şırnak and Cizre was declared a Special Security Area and the army occupied the city and implemented a curfew for 10 days.

Dozens of people, including children and old people were massacred. In addition, by desecrating the naked body of Ekin Wan, who fell a martyr in a clash in the town of Varto in Muş, the state has shown once again how much it is afraid of women’s resistance.

More than 100 people died, and several hundred were injured, when the state, still using its puppets in DAESH, caused the massacre in front of the Ankara station on 10 October.

The State, with the AKP at its head, has shown us all the savagery which it can use against the people, and continues to show it !

While in the west, it attacks every protest and kill revolutionary activists in there homes, in the east, the state is bombing martyr’s graves.

Everywhere in Turkish Kurdistan, military operations are carried out in order to destroy and neutralize the guerrillas.

It is in this context that three women from the PKK guerrilla fell martyrs after the bombing operations on the martyr cemetery of Pülümür in Dersim.

All these actions, arrests, martial law and massacres, bombings or specific operations against the guerrillas have one goal: that the oppressed, our working class, give up the fight !

The three guerrilla fighters of the TKP/ML TIKKO who fall in Ovacık are, like the other fighters of the people who died in martyrdom, seeds sown on the earth.

The red flag that they waved on top of those mountains didn’t fall and will never fall.

They opened the wings of immortality on the way to freedom and salvation of the working class.

They fought for the liberation of Kurdish people whose language, culture, politics are ignored, cut into pieces by assimilation, destruction and denial.

They were fighting for the oppressed of each people and each oppressed belief, for every culture and prohibited creed. They resisted for the liberation of women, victims of domestic and marital violence who die every day at the hands of men. They fought against oppression, violence and terror by which neoliberal attacks rob the youth of the people.

Now each of them took an honorable place in history as a symbol of resistance. Each paid his tribute and was on each field of the struggles of youths, and now these have become immortal comrade by becoming an example for others.

Cengiz, Hakan and Özgüç … These comrades, with whom we have campaigned side by side, have long fought to make the movement Yeni Demokrat Gençlik organizing every young people and become a major force fighting against fascism. Our comrades were the developers and animators of our countryside, of our conferences and of our village activities.

These comrades, by martyrdom without surrendering and by fighting, honored and praised the struggle of youth !

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Ten years have passed since Bouna and Zied, two youths aged 17 and 15 years, found the death in an electrical transformer, as police hunted them.

10 years ago the banlieues flared at the news of this new murder police.

Throughout France, in popular neighborhoods, young people rebelled for almost a month and a half against the police and the bourgeois state.

A new specter appeared to the bourgeoisie and its state and for all the European imperialist bourgeoisie who saw new uprisings, from Stockholm to London and also in Ferguson for the imperialist bourgeoisie of the United States.

Faced with this revolt, the bourgeoisie had to declare a state of emergency, which had not been declared by the war in Algeria.

From right to left and extreme left too, convictions accumulated against this righteous anger and a mobilization of this magnitude.

The so-called 'revolutionaries' showed their true face siding with the bourgeoisie and not with the popular masses in struggle.

Since the beginning of the revolt, the Maoists have said that this was fully legitimate and that the role of the revolutionaries was to be at the side of the rebels against the police.

"It's right to rebel!" that's what we hammered in front of all those who have found every excuse imaginable and possible to discredit the just struggle of young people from popular banlieues.

The Maoists have been among the only political forces to be on the field at the very centre of the places of the uprising to support it.

10 years later the situation has only worsened. The bourgeoisie discharges the economic crisis on the backs of proletarians, and this reflects even more in popular areas where they almost exclusively proletarians live.

Unemployment is 2.5 times higher than the rest of the territory, reaching 45% among young people; the proportion of precarious employment contracts is greater; the poverty rate is three times higher; immigrants or people of immigrant origin are more numerous, suffering, in addition, the oppression of racism; there are more single-parent families, which means more women (90% of single-parent families) in difficult situations (unemployed 50%); housing conditions are more difficult than elsewhere.

In a situation where the state racism is evident, where unemployment is on the rise and working conditions are becoming tougher, the popular quarters are at the forefront in the offensive of the bourgeoisie against the working class.

And the police continue to maim, countless are eyes lost because of the fired rubber bullets, and killing, from Wissam El- Yamni to Amine Bentousi the list is long, every year the police kills more than ten people in our neighborhoods... and we see the same thing in all the imperialist countries.

The revolt of the banlieues is proof that the proletarian youth cannot crushed and is able to react in France as in all the imperialist countries.

Even today, we continue to say that it is right to rebel!

Today we must say that it is right to answer to the violence of the bourgeois state through revolutionary violence.

So as it is right to support all the struggles that develop outside the rules of the bourgeois state - as at Air France, etc.

The Bloc Rouge (unification of the Maoists) and the Maoist Communist Party - Italy, organize an international meeting in occasion of the 10 years of the revolt in the banlieues, as we did in 2006.

Because it is necessary - before and now – to reflect and find a guide to action so that the riots become part of the march of the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries.

We invite all communist forces, revolutionary and progressive at international level to attend this meeting and to contribute in all possible forms.

Where there is oppression, there is resistance!

Against the imperialist bourgeoisie and all reactionaries, it is right to rebel!

Friday, October 23, 2015

Democracy and Class Struggle says the Icelandic Pots and Pans Rebellion a grassroots movement was hijacked by Liberals and there have been serious setbacks in Iceland as well as some victories. It should not be called a revolution but a rebellion that has largely but not exclusively been integrated into the political system.The idea that a peaceful Pots and Pans revolution can see away capitalism is a myth spread by social democrats and reformists and the Film Reykjavik Rising is a serious attempt to examine the failures in Iceland and not just project fake "revolutionary" successes.The presence of Danish NATO Commando's off Reykjavik during the storming of the Icelandic Parliament at the request of Icelandic Government should tell us all we need to know about how a genuine anti capitalist revolution will be met in Iceland - it is a lesson Icelanders have learnt and so should we.

The Following Report is from US Uncut

In a move that would make many capitalists’ head explode if it ever happened here, Iceland just sentenced their 26th banker to prison for their part in the 2008 financial collapse.

In two separate Icelandic Supreme Court and Reykjavik District Court rulings, five top bankers from Landsbankinn and Kaupping — the two largest banks in the country — were found guilty of market manipulation, embezzlement, and breach of fiduciary duties. Most of those convicted have been sentenced to prison for two to five years. The maximum penalty for financial crimes in Iceland is six years, although their Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments to consider expanding sentences beyond the six year maximum.

After the crash in 2008, while congress was giving American banks a $700 billion TARP bailout courtesy of taxpayers, Iceland decided to go in a different direction and enabled their government with financial supervisory authority to take control of the banks as the chaos resulting from the crash unraveled.

Back in 2001, Iceland deregulated their financial sector, following in the path of former President Bill Clinton. In less than a decade, Iceland was bogged down in so much foreign debt they couldn’t refinance it before the system crashed.

Almost eight years later, the government of Iceland is still prosecuting and jailing those responsible for the market manipulation that crippled their economy. Even now, Iceland is still paying back loans to the IMF and other countries which were needed just to keep the country operating.

When Iceland’s President, Olafur Ragnar Grimmson was asked how the country managed to recover from the global financial disaster, he famously replied,

“We were wise enough not to follow the traditional prevailing orthodoxies of the Western financial world in the last 30 years. We introduced currency controls, we let the banks fail, we provided support for the poor, and we didn’t introduce austerity measures like you’re seeing in Europe.”

Meanwhile, in America, not one single banking executive has been charged with a crime related to the 2008 crash and U.S. banks are raking in more than $160 billion in annual profits with little to no regulation in place to avoid another financial catastrophe.

The state-wide gherao of eight peasant organizations in Punjab yesterday on October 23rd had a very successful impact in arousing the peasantry.

It turned out to be a real thorn in the flesh for ruling class politicians and exposed their true nature. In many parts of Punjab a police barricade was deployed to thwart the agitators and the peasantry responded by launching sit ins.High court areas were also blocked. Thousands were arrested when protesting and later released.

The boil and rage within the hearts of the peasants against the state’s policies was reflected .The agitation was reminiscent of a torrent erupting and a spark was literally turned into a Priarie fire.

The unity of 8 organizations representing different trends played an important role.

The most significant role was played by the B.K.U.(Ugrahan) and it’s secretary Sukhdev Singh Khokri felt the gherao was successful and the agitation would be consolidated by a joint programme of al 8 peasant organization sin Ludhiana on October 26th.

The gherao programme ended at 5.30 p.m yesterday.

The biggest mobilization occurred in the districts of Sangrur and Bhatinda followed by Muktsar and Mansa districts.Around 20,000 people were mobilized for the protest.

It was one of the best examples of protracted agitations of the peasantry at district levels and demonstrated the painstaking grass-root work done to organize the peasantry and raise political consciousness.

It is also important that organizations represnting landless peasantry also participated.

A light literally shimmered all over Punjab yesterday.

The methods of mobilization against police arrests and blockades was impressive and demonstrated the significance of protracted struggle.

We also learn the true nature of the ruling classes administration who use all possible means to trample on the peoples movements .The detaining of so many activists verified this .

Farmers and farm workers carried out a protest march on the Moga-Ferozepur national highway today and later staged a demonstration in front of the residence of Agriculture Minister Tota Singh in support of their demands.

They are seeking higher compensation for cotton growers who lost their crop due to the whitefly attack and remunerative rates for basmati crop, besides other demands related to the welfare of peasants.

Sukhdev Singh Kokri, general secretary of the BKU (Ekta), demanded a relief of Rs 40,000 per acre for farmers whose crop has been damaged by the whitefly attack, Rs 20,000 per family compensation for farm workers, Rs 4,500 per quintal for basmati Pusa-1509 variety, and Rs 5,000 per quintal for basmati Pusa-1121 variety.

He sought the release of due payment of sugar cane farmers by private mills, debt relief and Rs 5 lakh financial assistance to next of kin of farmers who committed suicide.
Farmers raised slogans against Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Tota Singh and levelled allegations of corruption in the purchase of ‘fake’ pesticides for the cotton crop, which caused huge losses to farmers.

The BKU leader alleged that both the Chief Minister and Tota Singh had not pleaded the case of farmers before Prime Minister Narendra Modi due to which adequate compensation had not been released by the Centre.

He alleged that the Chief Minister did not listen to the problems of farmers, forcing them to take to the streets.
The BKU leader threatened to intensify their agitation if their demands were not met by the government at the earliest.

He said the state government would be responsible for inconvenience being faced by the public due to their agitations. “We will not call off our agitation any cost”, he added.
Dharna near Dhindsa’s residence
Sangrur:

Hundreds of farmers and labourers on Friday staged a dharna near the residence of Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa. Despite the efforts of the police to prevent farmers from reaching Dhindsa’s residence, a large number of protesters gathered near the minister’s residence and staged a dharna for three hours.

However, the police rounded up 40 farmers and took them to Sadar police station, Sangrur. They were released later.
Dilbag Singh Harigarh, a district-level leader of the BKU (Ugrahan), said the police also detained their two leaders — Jagtar Singh Kalajhar and Sham Dass Kanjhli — from their houses in the wee hours today. However, they were released later in the day.

He said hundreds of farmers could not reach Dhindsa’s residence as the police did not allow them to do so. He said these farmers staged dharnas where the police stopped them.

He said a demonstration was also staged at Chathe Nakte village, near Sunam.
Protesters detained, released
Hoshiarpur: Farmers and farm workers marching towards the residence of Chief Parliamentary Secretary Mohinder Kaur Josh for gherao were detained by the police on Friday. However, they were released
later in the day.

Earlier, the protesters were stopped by police personnel in front of the local ITI where they staged a dharna. Alleging ignorance by the state and Central governments, the protesters also raised slogans. Farmer leaders condemned police action and demanded that a relief of Rs 40,000 per acre for farmers and Rs 20,000 for farm workers.

Chandigarh, October 23
Farmers and farm workers on Friday staged dharnas outside the residences of the ministers and other leaders of Punjab as per the programme announced earlier to press for their demand, seeking Rs 40,000 per acre over damage of cotton.
Dharnas were staged outside the residence of Food and Supplies Minister Adaish Partap Singh Kairon, Markfed Chairman Jarnail Singh Wahad in Nawanshahar, Rajya Sabha Member Balwinder Singh Bhunder and Chief Parliamentary Secretary Prem Mittal in Mansa.

The talks between farmer organisations and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal here about a fortnight back had remained inconclusive.
Meanwhile, over 100 farmers marching towards the residence of Chief Parliamentary Secretary Mohinder Kaur Josh in Hoshiarpur were detained by the police and later released, the police said.

They were gathering near ITI on the Jalandhar-Hoshiarpur road when the police came into action to thwart their action plan, the police said.
In Sangrur, the protestors staged dharna in front of the residence of Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa despite barricades put up by the police, while they picketed the residence of Agriculture Minister Tota Singh in Moga.

However, the dharnas by farmers remained “peaceful”, the police said.
BKU (Ekta) General Secretary Sukhdev Singh said the eight farmer unions and Khet Mazdoor union were forced to continue their agitation and made it clear that the unions have not withdrawn their protest but have only changed its mode.

Under the new programme, the farmers gheraod the residences of SAD-BJP alliance Cabinet Minister, Ministers of State and Chief Parliamentary Secretaries, he said.
The farmers were demanding Rs 40,000 per acre damage of cotton relief, he added.

They charged the state government with not being willing to pay the sought relief.
Earlier this month, the farmers had launched a ‘Rail Roko’ agitation against the Parkash Singh Badal government to demand for higher compensation.
Initially, the agitation was for two days, October 7-8, but continued till October 12.

They called off their rail blockade agitation on October 13, but decided to gherao all state ministers, ruling party MLAs, other party leaders.
There agitation is against the state government for non-acceptance of all of their demands, including higher compensation for cotton crop loss. — PTI

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Urban militias and guerrillas of TiKKO, linked to TKP/ML, made several actions since the Suruç Massacre this summer.

TiKKO has been conducting operations for several months against Gendarmerie bases in Dersim province and has just suffered an assault led by the army. Last night, 3 militants were martyred during a clash.

Dersim : Specific actions against the guerrillas continued in Dersim. According to the information we got from our local sources, a major operation was organized yesterday by the Turkish army in the village of Mercan Şahverdi in the Pulur area (Ovacık).

Following this operation, three militants of TiKKO have fallen as martyrs.

We learned that the military operation, backed by aviation, which took place around the village of Şahverdi attached to the city of Ovacık in Dersim, lasted from 11 pm till 3 am.

During this operation, a clash broke out between the guerrillas of TKP/ML-TiKKO and the military.

According to the information given by villagers, 3 TiKKO guerrillas died following the clashes and the massive helicopter-led assault.

It was pointed out that after the clashes, and until morning, soldiers combed the whole area.

It was reported that in addition to the death of three guerrillas of TKP/ML-TiKKO, 4 villagers of Sahverdi were arrested and taken to Ovacık Gendarmerie post.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Netanyahu Exonerates Hitler of Responsibility for the HolocaustNetanyahu claims that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was Responsible for Giving Hitler the Idea for the Final Solution!At the World Zionist Organisation Congress on 20th October, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made what, even by his standards was an outrageous claim. Hitler was initially only in favour of expelling Jews from Europe (what was known as the Madgascar Plan) and that it was the Mufti who persuaded him of the merits of exterminating them.When I first heard Netanyahu’s statement, I immediately thought of a similar claim by Pastor John Hagee, the President of Christians United for Israel. Hagee, a virulent anti-Semite, had stated in a sermon that Hitler was a “hunter” sent by God to drive the Jews to Israel. [CBS News, 23.5.08. Hagee: Pro-Israel, Anti-Semitic?] It would appear that Hitler was in fact an agent of the Mufti not god!

It is a claim that will be grist to the mill for holocaust deniers. But what Netanyahu is doing is what Zionist historians have been doing for over 60 years, which is to try and make the Palestinians and their leader major partners in the Holocaust and by extension to claim that Arab hostility to Zionism has nothing to do with settler colonialism, land theft and the expulsion of the refugees. It’s all because the Palestinians and Arabs hate Jews. In other words anti-Zionism is nothing more than anti-Semitism.The Zionist holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem has played a full part in this. They have a whole wall devoted to the Mufti of Jerusalem. In the Holocaust Encyclopedia, the section devoted to the Mufti is only slightly shorter than that accorded to Hitler and larger than the combined size of the entries for Goebbels and Goering, Heydrich and Himmler. As Israeli historian, Tom Segev noted, the only image of a Palestinian in Yad Vashem ‘(is) a photo featured prominently on a wall depicting the Mufti sieg heiling a group of Nazi storm troopers’. Its purpose is to ensure that ‘the visitor is left to conclude that there is much in common between the Nazis’ plan to destroy the Jews and the Arabs’ enmity to Israel.’ [Segev, The Seventh Million, p.425]The Mufti was a minor war criminal but the idea that he instigated the final solution is absurd. If anyone was a major war criminal it was Walter Rauff, the father of the gas chambers who invented the mobile gas trucks, first used in the T4 Euthanasia programme and then the Final Solution. Rauff had the blood of some 100,000 Jews on his hands and tried, when the Nazis occupied Tunisia in 1943, to build an extermination camp at Kairoun and murder its Jews. After the war he became an Israeli agent and Israel later helped him to escape to South America. [ ‘In the service of the Jewish state’, Shraga Elam, Dennis Whitehead, Ha’aretz 29.3.07] The Mufti was responsible for recruiting 3 Muslim Divisions in Bosnia but they were primarily concerned with fighting the Serb Chetniks. They had no involvement in the Jewish deportations, bar handing over some 210 Jews from New Albania (Kosovo) to the SS. Indeed such was their attitude to the Jewish Question that they were sent for retraining to France where they promptly deserted to the Resistance! The only example of a rebellion within the ranks of the SS. [Stephen Schwartz, ‘The Jews, the Serbs and the Truth,’ FrontPageMagazine.com 21.3.05., see also Gilbert Achchar pp. 143-144, The Arabs & the Holocaust]. What Netanyahu doesn’t mention is the 3 declarations issued by senior Muslim clerics in Bosnia against Croat-Nazi measures against the Jews and Serbs – in Mostar in 1941, Banja Luka on 12.11.41 and Sarajevo in October 1941. Muslim Albania was the only Nazi occupied country in Europe where the number of Jews at the end of the year (2,000) was greater than the number at the beginning (200). Not one Jew was deported from Albania under Nazi occupation.

A transcript of the meeting between Hitler and the Mufti on November 28 1941 is contained in Walter Lacquer's Israel-Arab Reader There is no mention of the Mufti urging Hitler to exterminate the Jews. He was only informed of the final solution in the summer of 1943 by Himmler..The Mufti was concerned, in his talk with Hitler, that Germany make a declaration that it supported the independence of the Arab countries - Syria, Iraq, Palestine - and Hitler refused to do this because he said it would cause problems in France and strengthen the supporters of de Gaulle who would see it as a threat to the French Empire. In reality Hitler had no intention of supporting Arab independence.If Germany had conquered the Arab countries it would simply have supplanted Britain and France as the imperialist power. The Arabs were considered lower on the racial ladder than the Jews.

When the Mufti’s met with Hitler, the final solution had already begun, with the invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa) in June 1941. By this time, the mass shooting of some 1 million Jews, by the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando killing squads, which operated in the rear of the Wehrmacht in White Russia and Ukraine, had taken place. Over 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar outside Kiev had already been murdered at the end of September 1941.But if what Netanyahu said was true then he should hang his head in shame because it was the Zionists who made Haj al Amin Husseini the Mufti after he came 4th in the election to the post of Grand Mufti in 1921. The British High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel, who had been instrumental in lobbying for the Balfour Declaration, appointed him because the Zionists loved this chauvinist and feudal Arab leader. [Nathan Weinstock, p. 117 Zionism: A False Messiah, Inklinks, 1969 citing Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement 1918-1929, London, 1974 pp. 189-93] The Palestinians considered the Mufti a collaborator with the British after the Revolt of 1936-39. At no stage had the Palestinians elected the Haj al-Amin Husseini. He had been imposed on them by the British and the Zionists.At the beginning of December 1941 the first extermination camp Chelmno had begun operations using carbon monoxide gas in mobile trucks and Belzec was to start its work in March 1942. Experimentation with murder by gas had taken place in September 1941 in Auschwitz when 850 Poles and Russian prisoners of war were murdered.On 12 December 1941, according to Goebbel’s diaries, Adolf Hitler made a speech in Berlin to Nazi leaders. Goebbels recorded in his diary that ‘With regard to the Jewish Question the Fuehrer is determined to make a clean sweep. He prophesized that if they brought about another world war, they would experience their annihilation. This was no empty talk. The world war is here. The annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence. This question is to be viewed without sentimentality. We’re not to have sympathy with the Jews, but only sympathy with our German people.’ [Diary entry of Josef Goebbels, 13 December 1941, quoted in Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed The World, 1940-1941, Allen Lane, 2007, p. 431] If we are to believe Netanyahu, this speech only came about as a result of Hitler’s meeting with the Mufti.In Mein Kampf, written in 1923-4, Hitler stated that the ‘sacrifice of millions at the front’ in the first world war would have been prevented if ‘twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas.’iiIn his 'Prophecy' speech on January 30 1939, which Hitler repeated at least 3 times, he spoke explicitly about annihilating the Jewish race.“Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (vernichtung) of the Jewish race throughout Europe.” Reitlinger, The Final Solution p.24., p.593 fn. 44. January 30, 1939; January 30 1942; September 30 1942, February 24th, March 21st and November 9th 1943. What led to the final solution was the T4 programme, whereby thousands, some estimate over 1/2 million, disabled Germans were murdered in 6 killing centres in Germany itself, before the Catholic Bishop Galen of Munster spoke out against it and Hitler was forced to end the programme, though it continued as the Wild Euthenasia in the concentration camps. [see Hitler’s Forgotten Victims, Suzanne Evans]The whole Zionist outlook is based on the rewriting of history. The ‘return’ of Jews to Palestine, the denial of the Nakba and the holocaust is no exception to this. Previously this has meant trying to portray itself as having led the Resistance to the Nazis in Europe whereas it was in fact a movement of collaboration – from Ha'avara in 1933 to the Kasztner Affair in 1944 in Hungary. The Jewish groups and currents which led the Resistance were primarily the Bund in Poland and the Communists Jews in France and Belgium. It should therefore come as no surprise that Netanyahu now seeks to exonerate the Nazis of the major portion of the blame and instead allocate responsibility to the Palestinians!Tony GreensteinSource: http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/

Democracy and Class Struggle says that Netanyahu proves once again that Zionism is and will always will be enemy of Jewish People - Netanyahu's Revisionist Zionist History Serves Anti Palestinian Agenda not Jewish People

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech on Tuesday to the Zionist Congress, blamed a Palestinian, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, for the Holocaust.

According to Netanyahu, the grand mufti (whose title means he was the senior Sunni Muslim religious leader in the city) convinced Hitler to launch a campaign of extermination when the two men met in November 1941.

"Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews," Netanyahu said. "And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to Palestine].’" In Netanyahu's history, Hitler then asked, "What should I do with them?" Al-Husseini replied, "Burn them."

The clear implication is that without al-Husseini, Hitler would simply have expelled the Jews in Nazi-controlled territory, not murdered them. It's true that al-Husseini was a virulent, murderous anti-Semite who was in contact with Hitler. But according to virtually all reputable historians, it is not true that he inspired the Holocaust.

Netanyahu's apparent effort to pin the Holocaust on Palestinians has become such a controversy that even the German government spokesperson, extraordinarily, condemned the comments: "We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own."

Here's what Netanyahu's history gets wrong, and what it shows about the politicization of the Holocaust.

Netanyahu's revisionism versus the actual history

There's still a lot of debate among historians over the origins of the Holocaust, particularly the question of whether Hitler's ideas led him to plot an extermination campaign years before the camps were built (the "intentionalist" view) or the Holocaust evolved somewhat organically from Nazi policy during the war (the "functionalist" view).

But there are issues on which scholars agree. "Historians have reached relative consensus on a number of important points concerning the decisions for the Final Solution," Christopher Browning, an eminent Holocaust historian at the University of North Carolina, wrote in a 2003 essay. Much of this consensus flatly contradicts Netanyahu's history:

Historians generally agree that the Nazis decided to exterminate Jews in Soviet territory in "mid-summer" 1941, during the Nazi invasion of Russia — months before Hitler's November 28 meeting with al-Husseini. The decision to extend this murder campaign to all Europe's Jews was made sometime in 1941.

Historians see the Holocaust as the natural extension of Hitler's earlier practices — not, as Netanyahu suggests, a dramatic shift for which an outside actor like the grand mufti might be blamed. "There is more continuity than discontinuity between the decisions for the Final Solution taken in 1941 and those behind the policies of ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering" that preceded them,

Browning writes.

Hitler was not inspired to create the Holocaust by one conversation with anyone, let alone the grand mufti. "There was no single decision, no 'big bang,' that produced the Final Solution," Browning writes. "Rather, there were a series of decisions taken incrementally; the decision-making process was cumulative and prolonged."

"To say that the mufti was the first to mention to Hitler the idea to kill or burn the Jews is not correct," Dina Porat, chief historian at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial museum, told Israel Radio.

"The idea to rid the world of the Jews was a central theme in Hitler's ideology a long, long time before he met the mufti."

The official German record of Hitler's November meeting with the mufti supports this interpretation.

"The Fuhrer replied that Germany's fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine," the record reads. That clearly indicates Hitler had a commitment to destroying global Jewry before the meeting, and that the mufti recognized it — indicating that he wasn't entertaining the idea of expelling the Jews to Palestine.

The likely roots of Netanyahu's Holocaust revisionism

So if this is the general view among historians, where did Netanyahu's ideas come from? It's hard to say for sure, but one very plausible candidate is a recent book, by two scholars at an Israeli research center, called Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

Authored by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz and (the late) Barry Rubin, the book argues that Hitler's meeting with al-Husseini played a critical role in inspiring the Holocaust:

After the meeting... Hitler made a fifth decision that would end millions of lives. He ordered [SS second-in-command Reinhard] Heydrich to organize a conference within ten days to prepare the "final solution to the Jewish question." Thus, Hitler made his key decision to start the genocide with al-Husseini's anti-Jewish rhetoric and insistence on wiping out the Jews fresh in his ears.

This theory has not been well-received, partly because the evidence for it is very thin.

"The notion that al-Husseini played a key role in Hitler’s settling on the Final Solution is based on one piece of thin hearsay evidence: comments that the controversial Hungarian Jewish leader Rudolf Kastner attributed to Eichmann’s subordinate Dieter Wisliceny," University of Houston professor David Mikics writes in a review of the book for Tablet.

"The claim that al-Husseini was the hidden hand behind Adolf Hitler is implausible, even silly," Mikics concluded.

The claim is, however, politically useful: It can be used to portray the Palestinians as irreconcilably committed to the extermination of Jews, and thus incapable of making peace.

"Rubin and Schwanitz are historians with a political agenda: They want to show that eliminationist anti-Semitism animates the Islamic Middle East, and so they paint al-Husseini as so devilishly anti-Semitic that he can contend with Hitler himself," Mikics writes.

Netanyahu, despite the backlash, is refusing to back down from his comments.

"It is absurd. I had no intention to absolve Hitler of responsibility for his diabolical destruction of European Jewry," he said in an official statement.

"It is equally absurd to ignore the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, for encouraging and urging Hitler, Ribbentropp, Himmler and others, to exterminate European Jewry.

"Al-Husseini is still a revered figure in Palestinian society, he appears in textbooks and it is taught that he is one of the founding fathers of the nation, and this incitement that started then with him, inciting the murder of Jews — continues,"

Netanyahu's statement concluded. "What is important is to recognize the historical facts and not ignore them, not then and not today

Democracy and Class Struggle says that Netanyahu proves once again that Zionism is and will always will be enemy of Jewish People

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech on Tuesday to the Zionist Congress, blamed a Palestinian, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, for the Holocaust.

According to Netanyahu, the grand mufti (whose title means he was the senior Sunni Muslim religious leader in the city) convinced Hitler to launch a campaign of extermination when the two men met in November 1941.

"Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews," Netanyahu said. "And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to Palestine].’" In Netanyahu's history, Hitler then asked, "What should I do with them?" Al-Husseini replied, "Burn them."

The clear implication is that without al-Husseini, Hitler would simply have expelled the Jews in Nazi-controlled territory, not murdered them. It's true that al-Husseini was a virulent, murderous anti-Semite who was in contact with Hitler.

But according to virtually all reputable historians, it is not true that he inspired the Holocaust.

Netanyahu's apparent effort to pin the Holocaust on Palestinians has become such a controversy that even the German government spokesperson, extraordinarily, condemned the comments: "We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own."

Here's what Netanyahu's history gets wrong, and what it shows about the politicization of the Holocaust.

Netanyahu's revisionism versus the actual history

There's still a lot of debate among historians over the origins of the Holocaust, particularly the question of whether Hitler's ideas led him to plot an extermination campaign years before the camps were built (the "intentionalist" view) or the Holocaust evolved somewhat organically from Nazi policy during the war (the "functionalist" view).

But there are issues on which scholars agree. "Historians have reached relative consensus on a number of important points concerning the decisions for the Final Solution," Christopher Browning, an eminent Holocaust historian at the University of North Carolina, wrote in a 2003 essay. Much of this consensus flatly contradicts Netanyahu's history:

Historians generally agree that the Nazis decided to exterminate Jews in Soviet territory in "mid-summer" 1941, during the Nazi invasion of Russia — months before Hitler's November 28 meeting with al-Husseini. The decision to extend this murder campaign to all Europe's Jews was made sometime in 1941.

Historians see the Holocaust as the natural extension of Hitler's earlier practices — not, as Netanyahu suggests, a dramatic shift for which an outside actor like the grand mufti might be blamed. "There is more continuity than discontinuity between the decisions for the Final Solution taken in 1941 and those behind the policies of ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering" that preceded them,

Browning writes.

Hitler was not inspired to create the Holocaust by one conversation with anyone, let alone the grand mufti. "There was no single decision, no 'big bang,' that produced the Final Solution," Browning writes. "Rather, there were a series of decisions taken incrementally; the decision-making process was cumulative and prolonged."

"To say that the mufti was the first to mention to Hitler the idea to kill or burn the Jews is not correct," Dina Porat, chief historian at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial museum, told Israel Radio.

"The idea to rid the world of the Jews was a central theme in Hitler's ideology a long, long time before he met the mufti."

The official German record of Hitler's November meeting with the mufti supports this interpretation.

"The Fuhrer replied that Germany's fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine," the record reads. That clearly indicates Hitler had a commitment to destroying global Jewry before the meeting, and that the mufti recognized it — indicating that he wasn't entertaining the idea of expelling the Jews to Palestine.

The likely roots of Netanyahu's Holocaust revisionism

So if this is the general view among historians, where did Netanyahu's ideas come from? It's hard to say for sure, but one very plausible candidate is a recent book, by two scholars at an Israeli research center, called Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

Authored by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz and (the late) Barry Rubin, the book argues that Hitler's meeting with al-Husseini played a critical role in inspiring the Holocaust:

After the meeting... Hitler made a fifth decision that would end millions of lives. He ordered [SS second-in-command Reinhard] Heydrich to organize a conference within ten days to prepare the "final solution to the Jewish question." Thus, Hitler made his key decision to start the genocide with al-Husseini's anti-Jewish rhetoric and insistence on wiping out the Jews fresh in his ears.

This theory has not been well-received, partly because the evidence for it is very thin.

"The notion that al-Husseini played a key role in Hitler’s settling on the Final Solution is based on one piece of thin hearsay evidence: comments that the controversial Hungarian Jewish leader Rudolf Kastner attributed to Eichmann’s subordinate Dieter Wisliceny," University of Houston professor David Mikics writes in a review of the book for Tablet.

"The claim that al-Husseini was the hidden hand behind Adolf Hitler is implausible, even silly," Mikics concluded.

The claim is, however, politically useful: It can be used to portray the Palestinians as irreconcilably committed to the extermination of Jews, and thus incapable of making peace.

"Rubin and Schwanitz are historians with a political agenda: They want to show that eliminationist anti-Semitism animates the Islamic Middle East, and so they paint al-Husseini as so devilishly anti-Semitic that he can contend with Hitler himself," Mikics writes.

Netanyahu, despite the backlash, is refusing to back down from his comments.

"It is absurd. I had no intention to absolve Hitler of responsibility for his diabolical destruction of European Jewry," he said in an official statement.

"It is equally absurd to ignore the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, for encouraging and urging Hitler, Ribbentropp, Himmler and others, to exterminate European Jewry.

"Al-Husseini is still a revered figure in Palestinian society, he appears in textbooks and it is taught that he is one of the founding fathers of the nation, and this incitement that started then with him, inciting the murder of Jews — continues,"

Netanyahu's statement concluded. "What is important is to recognize the historical facts and not ignore them, not then and not today

Armies are not meant to be used against your own citizens, but the Indian state has a long history of doing that anyway, in Kashmir and the northeast.

The Air Force tends to stay away from this sort of thing as well, but did famously break from that policy in Aizawl in 1966, attempting to bomb strongholds of the Mizo National Front.

Now, it appears the Air Force is once again planning to go down this road.

As part of its anti-Maoist operation in Bastar, the IAF is now prepared to carry out air strikes against the extremists !!! ( comrades DCS ) in Chhattisgarh.

Having conducted drill exercises in the region, on Wednesday, Additional Director General of Police (anti-Naxal operations) R K Vij said the IAF would now be prepared to retaliate from the air if necessary.

Unlike Aizawl, however, this isn't going to involve bombs. Instead, the planned retaliation is primarily a response to Maoist willingness to attack IAF helicopters that are used primarily for rescue operations in the area.

In the video above, Maoists can be seen carrying out mock drills with bazookas and heavy artillery to shoot down Indian choppers. “Maoists have often fired at Mi-17s (helicopters).

We have lost personnel and people, but we have never retaliated,” Vij told The Indian Express.

Until now, authorities have been reluctant to fire from the skies, but the attacks on the helicopters,
including one that was brought down in 2013, has prompted a change in the policy, which is being termed as "self-defence.

It has been reported that on October 13, three IAF helicopters practised strafing a specified area of Bijapur, the heart of the Maoists population in the region.

“Garud commandos of the Indian Air Force practised firing from Mi-17.

We are not sitting ducks, we can also attack them. It will help us handle the situation better," Vij added.